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This Star's on Fire



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Points: 8363
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Sun Jan 13, 2013 5:58 am
shiney1 says...



Image

This was my first dragon commission on devianart, and it was for 100 points.
The requester asked for something very bizzarre: Their cat, Star, in the form of a dragon with both bluebonnets and fire as the scenery. Along with a kitten.

... :shock:

I was a little overwhelmed at first but I didn't give up, and I finally finished it!

Spoiler! :
I know that the flowers are not the best part, and they gave me the most headache. I'll have to practice drawing flowers :/


Please do not use my artwork. Brushes belong to their respective owners on deviantART.
"If you ever have a problem don't say 'Hey God I have a big problem.' Rather 'Hey Problem... I have a big God and it's all going to be okay."
  





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Sun Jan 13, 2013 6:07 am
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ERZA says...



When I first saw the tail I thought it is a dragon and i was right! This picture is so nice and i love it. the dragon in there looks quite tamed and really friendly and harmless too! and that little kitten simply looks cute hanging in there. I don't mind the flowers at all my eyes simply goes back to that dragon and the little kitten! Good work :)!
Always and Never are two words to always remember never to use.
  





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Sun Jan 13, 2013 10:29 pm
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xXTheBlackSheepXx says...



Shiney, ohmygosh. Shiney.

Those eyes!!! :D :D :D

That is TOTALLY what I have been talking about! They just jumped right off the page when I first looked at the picture. Please, keep this up! It looks great!

I think you did a great job on the fire and flowers! I know how much time background work takes. If you really wanted it to go faster, you could try downloading flame or flower brushes from a place like DA. I don't use brushes like this very much myself, but it might help you if you continue to make detailed backgrounds like this in the future!

One thing I would've liked to see would be a little more reflected light coming off of the flames and onto your dragon. I can see that there are areas, like along the top of it's back, where you added a hint of orange light. This is good, I think it would look better if it was bolder though. The color of the dragon just looks a little bland in my opinion, solid gray. You could add colored highlights where the reflected light of the fire would bounce off it's scales.

Just a small comment, but the cat's eyes look a little blank. For some reason I was just imagining if they were really large and cute like that cat off of Shrek.

You're getting better with every drawing! Congrats on the commission!
The bad news is we don't have any control.
The good news is we can't make any mistakes.
-Chuck Palahniuk
  





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Sun Jan 13, 2013 11:38 pm
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Sassafras says...



Hello, Shiney!

First of all, this is an amazing piece. I really love how you drew the dragon. The body is nice, your lines aren't broken, and the anatomy is continuous. That's good, great actually. I love the dragon's eyes, they have depth, shape, and the coloring is perfect.

The fire is really impressive and I'm glad you added the light of the fire reflected on the dragon itself, that's an important thing to add to bring life to the scene. However, on the paw closet to the viewer, there is a lack of fire reflection in comparison to the rest of the body. This makes the paw seem strangely out of place. We can see little hints of orange there, but I feel there should be just a bit more, the same goes for the dragon's stomach.

I love your color scheme here, I think everything fits in well, except the pink collar. It looks strange and odd. I don't know whether or not the person who commissioned this photo asked specifically for the collar to be pink, but I think it would fit in better if it was a darker color more suited to the background and the dragon itself.

Overall there is really not much bad to say about this piece. I think it's amazing and beautiful. Your art style is spectacular!

-RP
A pale imitator of a girl in the sky.
  





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Mon Jan 14, 2013 12:03 am
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shiney1 says...



Thanks for the critiques guys!

Blacksheep: I did use dA flower brushes for the flowers. I still want to be able to draw a field of flowers on my own, but that's a long time away :(
And yeah, I found a tutorial on dA that helped me with the eyes!

ReisePiecey: I understand what you are saying with the glow. I'll try to keep that in mind when I do fire. And the pink collar was a mandatory attribute to this piece, so I couldn't make it any darker, sadly.
"If you ever have a problem don't say 'Hey God I have a big problem.' Rather 'Hey Problem... I have a big God and it's all going to be okay."
  





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Wed Jan 16, 2013 9:27 pm
FermentingFruit says...



Wow. That's a really tough request, but you did it really well.

I'm going to start with some nitpicks, as that's what I always do. One of the first things I noticed you already said. What I'm talking about is the flowers. They're pretty simplistic, and could use a little bit of work. Another thing I noticed was the color of the dragon. I noticed that the color was pretty much the same throughout the whole thing. I thought it was pretty boring, not going to lie. The last thing I noticed was the proportions of the ears. The one on the left was a different size than the one on the right.

The good stuff now. The best part about this in my opinion was the fire. The fire looked extremely good, and really real. The colors were right, and the fire looked really really good. The dragon overall was really good. You really defined the muscles in the legs, and those looked really good. Also like with the hairs on the tail. There were little details that really made the dragon pop, and I liked that. A really great piece overall, especially for your first with a tablet. Keep it up.

Fruit
Save time... see it my way.

"During high school, I played junior hockey and still hold two league records: most time spent in the penalty box; and I was the only guy to ever take off his skate and try to stab somebody."
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